SIEV-X: One year on

3 October 2002 — 10:00am

The first anniversary of the death by drowning of 353 asylum seekers on SIEV-X is nearly upon us. The boat sank on October 19. A few survivors were rescued by Indonesian fishing boats twenty hours later. We heard the news on October 23.

Who will forget the picture of three little girls dressed in white on our front pages. All dead. The government refused their father, who has a temporary protection visa as a refugee, permission to fly to Indonesia to comfort his grieving wife, a SIEV-X survivor. If he left, he couldn't come back, Howard and Ruddock said. Labor agreed.

I was so shocked by the responses of Howard and Beazley to news of the tragedy that I wrote a piece for the Herald on the death of the humanitarian instinct in Australian politics. I had no idea then that Howard had - on the evidence since prised out of the government - falsely stated that the sinking had nothing do with us because SIEV-X sank in Indonesian waters. We now know it sank in international waters well within our comprehensive surveillance zone. We now know that despite intelligence confirmation that SIEV-X - reported as small and overcrowded - was on its way, the navy took no special steps to find it.

I got involved in the SIEV-X story by accident this year when I was in Canberra to report the children overboard evidence and instead heard Admiral Marcus Bonser discredit evidence from Admiral Geoffrey Smith that the navy knew nothing of SIEV-X until after it sank. Now the focus has shifted to Australian Federal Police "disruption activities" in Indonesia, whereby it subsidised the Indonesian police force in exchange for unsupervised, unaccountable action to stop boats leaving.

It's been a bitter debate, with many castigating reporters of the case as conspiracy theorists and worse.

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Today, I republish my election campaign piece on SIEV-X, details of memorial services to be held around the nation, and whistleblower Tony Kevin's fascinating speech today in Newcastle on AFP/Indonesian police "disruption activities".

And I repeat - why on earth has Labor closed down the unthrown children inquiry without calling Reith and key staffers on the children overboard lie, and despite now raising extremely serious, unanswered questions on SIEV-X? John Faulkner and co can rant and rave all they like about their SIEV-X suspicions, but they haven't had the guts to keep the inquiry open, pursue their questions, and keep the pressure on government and bureaucracy to bloody well answer them.

Tony Kevin's energy and commitment to uncover the truth has been incredible. Remember, his foundational claim was that SIEV-X sank south of the Sunda Strait in international waters within our comprehensive surveillance zone. Until their denials were buried beneath contrary government documents Howard, defence minister Robert Hill and the defence force persisted with baseless claims that SIEV-X sank in Indonesian waters outside our surveillance zone. (See SIEV-X: Another bombshell, smh).

To this day, Howard refuses point blank to reveal the basis on which he repeatedly, categorically asserted on October 24 and since that SIEV-X sank in Indonesian waters. Those assertions killed the SIEV-X story stone dead at the time. Thanks to Tony Kevin, the second great untruth of the 2001 election campaign has been uncovered.

Melbourne resident Marg Hutton has also proved the power of one. She started a webpage called Zarook a while ago to connect older women. She got hooked on the SIEV-X mystery early and created the ultimate SIEV-X archive, with every piece ever written on the topic, audio and video reports and reader input. The archive is used by politicians, defence, bureaucrats, journalists and everyone else interested in the topic. It's a brilliant resource, it's free, and it's been built by one woman, her tech-head friends and a growing support group of older women. Congratulations, Marg. You've helped prove that the humanitarian instinct is not dead in the Australian community.

Webdiarist Stuart Worthington wrote: "You were highly critical of the government when they 'drew' a link between boat people and terrorists. You now commit this same offence in trying to link the sinking of SIEV-X with the Howard government. Double standards, Margo?"

Stuart, I have not alleged a link. Since I started reporting this story, I asked questions - mostly about the source of the government's assertion that SIEV-X sank in Indonesian waters - and the answers proved to be false and to have no basis. Now I'm reporting comments and questions from others.

Howard and co didn't ask questions about whether there were terrorists on the boats. They just said there were - without proof (the government has since admitted not one terrorist was found in any of the boats that have come so far) and in defiance of common sense and the fact that the S11 terrorists were well-funded and flew in with passports.

I've already got some emails from readers about where to take Webdiary and hope for more (see Loving Hitler). I'll put up your ideas - and my comments - on Monday. I'm off tomorrow. Have a good weekend.

***

A cursory nod, a closed hand, a blind eye and a dead heart

By Margo Kingston

25/10/2001

WHEN you sponsor an underprivileged Australian or overseas child, you know you won't make a dent in the overall problem. You do what you can, to give hope to a life. This is the core of the humanitarian instinct. You receive reports on the life and the connection adds meaning to your life. This is a reward for the gift of hope.

Mainstream Australian politics has excised the humanitarian instinct and the reward is an agonising leakage of hope in ourselves.

Our leaders responded with a cursory nod to the news of the death by drowning of hundreds of men, women and children risking life in the quest for hope from us.

Before all the facts were known, before the survivors told their stories, the leaders tore each other to shreds about who was to blame, not for the horror, but for the fact that the boat left Indonesia. They poured their emotion into bitterness for political advantage, none left for the dead or the traumatised survivors or grieving relatives in Australia.

Yesterday morning on the ABC's AM, Mark Willacy asked John Howard this question: "Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf says his country now has 2.5 million Afghan refugees and he says Australia won't even accept a boatload of 200. Given our involvement in the campaign against terrorism aren't we obligated to maybe accept a few more people that are fleeing this sort of regime?"

Howard replied: "A few hundred is not going to make a difference when you're dealing with 2.5 million. The way to deal with this problem is to help it at its source, change it at the source, not to imagine that by us taking a few hundred you're going to make any indentation into that huge problem."

He was not asked to make a difference to "the problem", he was asked to make a difference to the lives of 200 people on our doorstep, asking for our help.

The Government insists that the humanitarian instinct is self-indulgent. It says people with the means to get on a boat to here rather than wallow in the camps of the damned - those who can show us their faces as they ask for our help - have no greater claim on our consciences.

What about those who cannot look us in the eye, some of whom are even less safe than those fleeing persecution who can, the Government asks?

To which I respond: Should we eliminate our instincts of compassion and empathy for a persecuted human being who does enter our space? Doesn't that make us less human when we do?

If we turn away, and they die asking us to take another look, is a sense of responsibility an inappropriate human response?

Yes, the refugee crisis is huge, too huge for any country to make a dent in, so huge only the world acting in concert can make a real difference. But the little bits of the problem that enter our orbit and connect with our values become part of our experience, and how we act or not act affects who we are.

At least Howard didn't run the standard argument that the dead were queue jumpers. That label has been ripped off our political justification for what we've done. Millions of refugees in Pakistan and Iran are in no queue. Some of those pay a people smuggler to get them a false Pakistani passport to fly to Indonesia, where - funded by Australia - the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has assessed 500 people as genuine refugees and put them in a queue for resettlement.

It hasn't moved. In desperation, at least 24 genuine refugees in the immovable queue got on that boat and drowned.

Why did we refuse to take any in the queue until May, when we said we'd resettle a mere 40 with relatives here? (None has come yet.) If we did, says the Government, the people smugglers would bring more refugees to Indonesia and the queue would get longer!

We turn our backs on the refugees who find a way to get near enough to look us in the eye and plead for a future, and if they die still trying for hope, we blame each other for letting them leave the place we won't take them from.

This is where the death of the humanitarian instinct has led us. To dead hearts.

***

SIEV-X FIRST ANNIVERSARY MEMORIAL NOTICE

We need your help! The first anniversary of the sinking of SIEV-X, October 19 2002, is fast approaching. To honour and commemorate the memory of 353 lives lost when their boat sank last October, and to commiserate with the few survivors and the many bereaved families, we are planning a public memorial notice in the news pages of The Weekend Australian on Saturday 19 October.

This initiative has been launched by the SIEV-X First Anniversary Memorial Notice Working Group, which comprises a group of friends of the www.sievx.com website.

The Edmund Rice Centre for Justice and Community Education, an experienced and highly reputable Catholic professional social justice organisation active in refugee support (erc) has agreed to receive and handle monies donated towards the cost of the notice.

The ERC will direct any surplus of funds that may be received in excess of the cost of the notice towards helping needy families of boat people in Australia.

Basically we will size the notice according to the total amount of donations received in the ERC, which is hard to predict at this early stage - 1/2, 1/4, or 1/8 of a page are the possibilities.

An advertisement of any size is expensive. We are asking for your generous support in contributing towards its cost.

Please, notify and send to ERC your donations as soon as possible, to give us a measure of what size notice we can afford to run. All contributions, no matter how small, will help. Persons and organisations who offer large contributions may be acknowledged by name in the notice, depending on how much space we have.

Why is this first anniversary memorial notice important?

It will be a public recognition on the first anniversary of this huge tragedy, and a public message of support for the victims of SIEV-X and their grieving family members, and for others who have suffered on their attempted boat journeys to Australia. It will testify publicly that many people who live in Australia share their pain.

We do not know to what extent mainstream media may recognise their responsibility properly to commemorate this major Australian tragedy on our doorstep. We want to show by this memorial notice that many Australians do care deeply about it, and care for its human victims. We also want to remind those who have already forgotten this human tragedy.

What will the notice contain?

* An appropriately worded general message of condolence (inspired by words from the many moving messages that are coming in to the SIEV-X website's "Jannah" memorial section - see sievx ).

* A short informational statement of what is so far known about the sinking of SIEV-X, based on Senate Committee official evidence. This is not intended to be a contentious or controversial "political" statement. It will be quiet and dignified in tone, aimed at stating succinctly facts about which there can be no reasonable disagreement. It will not hypothesise or accuse - this public memorial notice is not the place for that.

* Summary reminders of SIEV-X observances and rallies planned for the 19/20 October weekend in cities around Australia.

The text, which is being drafted by the Working Group, will not be released publicly until its appearance on 19 October. It will be sent to major media news outlets (print and electronic) two days before its publication date, on a strictly embargoed basis, to encourage media interest in the anniversary.

It is not proposed that the notice should contain illustrations or list names of victims or survivors, for reasons of family privacy and space.

How can I make my donation?

1. Credit card or cheque: The form is at erc. Send to The Edmund Rice Centre for Justice and Community Education, 90 Underwood Rd, Homebush NSW, 2140, or fax to 61 (0)2 9764 1743.

2. Cheques should be made out to: "Edmund Rice Centre - SIEV X anniversary" and sent to the above address.

3. Donations can also be made by phone. Contact Edmund Rice Centre with credit card details on 61 (0)2 9764 1330

4. You can also send credit card details and amount you wish to donate to: erc@erc.org.au

The Edmund Rice Centre will issue receipts. For further information see erc.

EVENTS COMMEMORATING THE ANNIVERSARY

Below is a list of events that we know of so far, planned to commemorate the first anniversary. Further details will be posted on the web as more information becomes available. See sievxevents.

If you know of other events that are being planned around the SIEV X anniversary please forward the details to feedback@sievx.com

Adelaide:

On this first anniversary of the tragedy we commemorate the dead and celebrate the survivors. Join us at Rymill Park at 12 noon on Saturday 19 October, 2002. Adelaide Refugee Collective ~ email adelaide@greenleft.org.au

Brisbane:

We are all boat people! Rally to commemorate the sinking of SIEV-X. Sun Oct 20, 1pm. King George Square, city. Ph: Mike 3831 2644.

Canberra :

There will be an early morning remembrance ceremony at Parliament House and a rally organised by the Canberra Refugee Action Committee later that morning in Garema Place, Canberra City. Tony Kevin and Keysar Trad will speak at the rally. Further details to come.

Hobart:

On Saturday 19 October, Tasmanians for Refugees are holding a memorial gathering to mark the anniversary of the sinking of the SIEV X in which 353 people drowned. Father Brian Gore will speak at the event commencing at midday on the Parliament House Lawns in Hobart. email: p.cameron@anglicare-tas.org.au

Melbourne:

Saturday 19th October 2002, 1.30pm - 4.30pm, Edwardes Lake Park, Reservoir at the end of Edwardes St near the playground and BBQ area. The refugee temporary protection visa (TPV) holders, the survivors and members of the Australian Iraqi community have initiated this commemorative event. The event will involve a multi-faith service. Survivors will speak in remembrance of the people who drowned. Everyone is welcome.Please bring flowers. For further information, contact: Tiffany Overall 9484 7944, tiffanyo@mrcne.org.au, Gabby Fakhri: 0413 764468, 9383 2533, gabbyfakhri@hotmail.com, or Alyssha: 0407 254 227

Perth:

On 20 October 2002 people will be coming together in the city to remember those who died. The day will kick off at approximately 12:30pm at Stirling gardens in the central CBD and move down to State Parliament House via Barrack and Hay Streets.For more information or to find out how you can help and to endorse the day please contact Phil on 9388 6009 or Tonja on 9307 9273, email:tonjaboyd@bigpo=nd.com

Sydney:

Rally for the truth about refugees and war. Unite against racism! Sat Oct 26, noon. Town Hall Sq, city. Ph 0417 275 713, 0405 224 070. (This is being organised by a coalition of refugee and

anti-war groups, and will take up SIEV-X as it's key refugee theme)

Wollongong:

Meet October 18, 6.30pm, Wollongong mall amphitheatre. Speakers include Margaret Reynolds (UN Association of Australia President), Simon Cunich (high school activist, Social Action Group TIGS), Ali Mehdi Sobi (who lost his wife and three daughters in the tragedy). There will also be a speaker on behalf of RAC. Commemorative march by candlelight to follow speakers. Contact Will 0425 299 217 for more info or to add your endorsement. There will also be a high school rally at 4pm which will feed into the main rally. Contact Simon Cunich on 4226 2010 for more info.

***

Australia's people smuggling disruption program in Indonesia

By Tony Kevin

Last week in the Senate, Senator John Faulkner stepped well outside any Australian politician's normal comfort zone. Over three days of adjournment debates in the Senate on September 23-25, he bravely raised what Alexander Downer termed "disgraceful" questions, on what the Australian Federal Police might have known about the sinking of asylum-seeker boats and loss of lives. (The text is in Faulkner's SIEV-X sizzle, smh)

Then on Thursday 26 September, supported by senior Labor Senators Robert Ray and Peter Cook, Faulkner mounted a fierce Question Time attack on the credibility of the Government's position. The brunt of the attack was borne by Australian Federal Police Minister, Senator Chris Ellison. Defence Minister Senator Robert Hill, representing the Foreign Minister, was also involved. The three Liberal Senators on the "children overboard" Committee, George Brandis, Brett Mason and Alan Ferguson, leaped to the Government's defence - mainly through personal attacks on me, because they had little of substance to say on the SIEV-X issue beyond labelling it a "fairy story". (See Ellison's answer to Faulkner's question on "disruption", Hill's failure to answer Faulkner's question on the role of spy organisation ASIS in people smuggling 'disruption', Ellison's failure to answer a question from Robert Ray on why Indonesia cancelled a protocol between its police and the AFP on people smuggling in September last year, Hill's failure to answer a question from Peter Cook on a high level meeting on people smuggling in June last year, Ellison's admission that he issued a ministerial direction to the AFP in September last year to step up measures to stop people smuggling from Indonesia and the Senate debate on the answers of Hill and Ellison at hansard), pages 4729 to 4741)

I will speak tonight on what Faulkner focussed on - the Australian Government's people smuggling disruption program in Indonesia. My co-speaker Sarah Stephens is speaking on the second layer of Australian Government "deterrence and denial" that was instrumental in the SIEV-X tragedy - the remarkable failure, by the most massive maritime air surveillance and naval interception operation Australia has ever mounted in the waters between Indonesia and Christmas Island, to detect this overloaded sinking boat and try to save the lives of those on board.

Until the Senate "children overboard" Committee began to enquire (at my request) into SIEV-X, the boat that sank on its way to Christmas Island on October 19 2001, drowning 353 people, mostly women and children, we knew nothing about a clandestine Australian "people-smuggling disruption program" (PSDP) in Indonesia.

What we now know has emerged slowly and very reluctantly - partly from Labor senators' persistent questioning of AFP and DIMIA (immigration department) witnesses in the Committee, and partly from an initially separate investigation by Channel Nine's Sunday, which has run four programs since February about a self-confessed Australian people smuggler and AFP-paid informant, Kevin Enniss.

The PSDP was begun on 27 September 2000 by a ministerial direction authorised by Ellison, aimed at stopping suspected illegal entry vessels (SIEVs) from leaving Indonesia.

In September 2001, Indonesia cancelled the Australia-Indonesia protocol under which the program was being carried out. Remarkably, the AFP continued to implement the program.

On 12 October 2001, fearing a surge of SIEVs, the People Smuggling Taskforce in the PM's Department directed agencies to "beef up" the PSDP. SIEV-X sank a week later.

What was the program? Senator Ellison has only just last week agreed to release the text of his 27 September directive. Until we see that, let's see how he described the program in the Senate on 26 September in reply to a question by Faulkner:

Upstream disturbance has been a key strategy of the Howard government in dealing with people-smuggling ... There is education - I have seen first-hand the dissemination of T-shirts and other means of education.

There is the question of dissuading people from embarking on a vessel, deterring them from becoming involved with people-smugglers.

There is, most importantly, working with overseas law enforcement bodies such as the Indonesian police to make sure that people-smugglers are apprehended - to flush out the people smugglers and to deal with them.

There are other initiatives in relation to intelligence gathering. Disruption and deterrence do not equate to sabotage.

The Australian Federal Police has not been involved in sabotaging vessels but it has been involved in upstream disturbance - that is, disturbing and disrupting the activities of ruthless people-smugglers.

On education, the Senate Committee was given the English language page of a tri-lingual leaflet widely distributed around places where asylum-seekers gathered, looking for ships to take them to Australia. Here it is:

New Australian laws ensure that those attempting to enter Australia illegally by boat will never live in Australia. Illegal boat arrivals will have no right to apply for asylum under the Australian system.

The people smugglers are happy to take your money but they cannot deliver - they cannot get you to Australia.

All recent arrivals at Ashmore Reef and Christmas Island have been transferred to places outside Australian jurisdiction including to Nauru and to Papua New Guinea.

Several boats have been returned to Indonesia (with all passengers) at the request of crews.

Nobody has got access to Australia or its asylum system.

If you get on a boat in Indonesia you will:

- Expose yourself and your family to great danger

- Lose your money

- Fail in your objective to get to Australia

The boats used by people smugglers are overcrowded and dangerous. Too many people have died trying to enter Australia by boat.

Stop. Go back. Don't get further into the trap.

Please look closely at the last three paragraphs. They are highly significant. Because this is precisely the sort of activity that Channel Nine has established, from the mouth of Kevin Enniss himself, that he engaged in.

He took large sums of money from asylum-seekers, and in return promised them that, as an undercover Australian policemen, he would get them safely to Australia. He exposed them to great danger, sending them off in overcrowded and unseaworthy boats that experienced engine failure, or sank. He did not get them to Australian territory. He defrauded them of their precious savings. He entrapped them.

While Ennis was doing these criminal things, he was also working as an Australian police informant - this has been admitted by him and by the AFP.

He was almost certainly an organiser - though the AFP has yet to admit this - of AFP-encouraged "Sting" operations designed to discredit the people smuggling industry and to deter people from using it.

Here is an extract from an Australian Federal Police Association survey of AFP activities in 2001. It comes from the section headed "People smuggling":

People smuggling is becoming increasingly covert and run by highly lucrative organized criminal enterprises involved in significant levels of official corruption

The AFP has taken out four arrest warrants for individuals involved in facilitating the arrival into Australia of in excess of 1,400 unlawful non-citizens via Indonesia.

A separate investigation in cooperation with the Indonesian National Police led to the prevention of a further 500 people leaving the shores of Indonesia to illegally enter Australia

It has become obvious that counteracting sophisticated "People Smuggling" syndicates is highly resource intensive for the AFP.

The AFP requires the use of sophisticated methods to identify organized criminal enterprises involved in people smuggling.

To this end the AFP needs to be sufficiently resourced to fund "STING" operations, whereby the AFP establishes small shipping companies in strategic locations known for smuggling illegal immigrants.

Please look closely at that last sentence. It is the only official admission I have so far seen that there were AFP-funded "sting" operations in Indonesia.

AFP Commissioner Keelty admitted to a Senate Estimates Committee in February that Enniss was not the only AFP informant in Indonesia: he said there were undisclosed numbers of others. I believe that these people were not only informants, but were also - as was Enniss - active "sting" operators: people who presented themselves as "real" people smugglers, in order to conduct phoney operations that defrauded and entrapped people trying to reach Australia. I think that is the meaning of the above sentence.

So here is the huge and ugly irony - the people that the Australian Government leaflet so dramatically warned asylum-seekers against using, were almost certainly people set up in business by the Australian Government in order to demonstrate the truth of those warnings.

This may seem inconsistent, but in fact is entirely logical. Since the Australian Government was trying to stop and deter people smuggling activity, what better way than to thoroughly infiltrate the activity in order to ensure that it failed and cheated people? What better way to drive the deterrent lesson home?

I am confident that at the end of the investigative road, this will also be proven.

To get back to what is known now: AFP Commissioner Keelty admitted in the Senate Committee on 11 July that the AFP had two kinds of working relationships in Indonesia.

First, there was its overt relationship with selected units of the Indonesian National Police POLDA. These selected units were given generous gifts in kind - not money, but things like training conferences in luxury hotels in Bali, promises of new patrol boats, new uniforms, office equipment etc. In return, POLDA units so favoured were under a general - not specific - obligation to work to disturb and disrupt people smuggling activities: what Ellison referred to last week in the Senate as "upstream disturbance".

Remember that people smuggling is not a crime under Indonesian law. People smugglers, who are usually foreigners, can only be fined or arrested for minor passport offences.

Keelty said that AFP hoped that POLDA units would arrest people smugglers at the point of embarkation and deliver their passengers over to the UN agencies UNHCR and IOM for migration processing. But he admitted to Senator Cook that AFP did not know how POLDA units chose to implement their obligation. He admitted that AFP would not know if, for example, POLDA units decided to disrupt people smuggling voyages by sabotaging engines. He acknowledged that such activities would be illegal under Australian law.

This was an ominous admission. Some of the dangerous voyages that we know about - not just SIEV-X but also the earlier "Palapa" voyage in August 2001, whose 230 passengers were rescued by the Tampa from death, three days after their engines failed in mid-ocean - involved reports of uniformed police taking people to the boats or forcing them to board overcrowded boats.

We know Enniss was working with Indonesian police in Kupang. How do we know if such units were not the very POLDA units that AFP was training and encouraging? On the basis of Keelty's evidence on 11 July, he did not know. And we do not know.

The second admitted AFP working relationship was with informants like Enniss. An AFP press release of 24 August boasts that Enniss's information came cheaply to the Australian taxpayer - only about $25,000. Thanks to Sunday, we know why. Enniss largely financed himself out of the dirty profits from his entrapment operations. One poor Pakistani young man paid him $10,000, went out in a boat that sank, swam back to shore but never saw his money again.

The AFP is adamant that they did not know about Enniss' people smuggling and extortion activities and that if he did undertake such activities - which , AFP admitted, would be illegal under Australian law - this would have been done in collusion with Indonesian police, not with AFP .

What we therefore have here is a strong triangular set of relationships (which allows) maximum deniability for the AFP. Whatever Enniss did that was illegal was done with POLDA. Whatever AFP did with Enniss and with POLDA - the other two legs of the triangle - was legal.

But an eminent Professor of Criminal Law at Sydney University, Mark Findlay, has challenged this. He said on Sunday on 1 September that for AFP to use Enniss as an informant if they knew anything at all about his criminal people smuggling activities would be likely to implicate AFP in his criminality. We will no doubt hear more about this.

I now want to talk about possible disruption of the SIEV-X voyage. AFP has refused to reveal the contents of a series of intelligence reports they had, before and after SIEV-X sailed, on the people smuggler, Abu Quessai and on his preparations for what we now know as the SIEV-X vessel, but which they then referred to as the Abu Quessai vessel. We know from other evidence that detailed reports on this vessel were reaching Canberra but AFP refused on 11 July to reveal their contents, on grounds that this could compromise their possible future legal proceedings against Abu Quessai.

AFP and other official witnesses claimed there were many disturbed attempted departures before the vessel finally departed from Bandar Lampung in Sumatra on 18 October. But survivors do not support this claim. They remember only one overnight bus journey, from Cisarua near Bogor in Central Java across to Merak, then by car ferry to Sumatra. They hid all day in a hotel belonging to the local chief of police. They were then bussed down to the sea and loaded onto a 19 meter boat - all 420 of them - by armed policemen. People who got frightened at the gross overloading, and tried to get off, were forcibly prevented from doing so.

The boat left before dawn on 18 October. It had a long crack in the hull, which required baling from the outset of the journey. A group of 25 passengers were allowed to get off on the way. They paid to be transferred to local fishing boats. They were the lucky ones. The rest went on. The next day the engine failed, in international waters about 60 nautical miles south of Java. The becalmed and top-heavy boat started to roll heavily. The hull cracked open. Water poured in. The waterlogged boat overturned and broke up. Many drowned instantly. Others clung to life for 22 hours. There were only 44 survivors, From the 397 passengers on board, 353 people mostly women and children drowned in those 22 hours.

No crew members were ever seen again. During the night, many survivors remember seeing mysterious large grey ships with searchlights and military-type deck structures. They shone lights on the waving and shouting survivors but did not rescue them.

The next day 44 survivors were miraculously picked up by fishing boats which happened to come out looking for them, it was claimed because they saw floating luggage. The survivors were quickly taken back to Jakarta and presented to the waiting international media, as a tragic object lesson of the huge dangers of people smuggling.

The next day, the Indonesian Government reversed its previous firm opposition to the Australian Navy towing asylum seeker boats back to Indonesian waters. Indonesia also agreed finally to co-host an anti-people smuggling international conference - something Australia had been pressing a reluctant Indonesia to do for months. The flow of boats stopped within a couple of weeks. Boat people arrivals have not been a problem for the Australian government since then.

Abu Quessai was arrested, tried and sentences to a few months in jail for passport offences. He admitted to having accomplices but would not say who they were. He became nervous when asked by a SBS Dateline reporter if his accomplices were from the police or military. Survivors say that they were warned on pain of death not to ever testify against Abu Quessai.

After a short sentence in a comfortable jail, he will be extradited back to his native Egypt or he may even secure refugee status elsewhere. If he was part of a POLDA people smuggling disruption operation, the POLDA units concerned will have many ways to protect and reward him.

At this stage I have no evidence of connections between Abu Quessai and POLDA units - apart from the survivor accounts of the departure circumstances - or between Abu Quessai and Australian police informants like Enniss.

We have already come a remarkably long way since I started in February on the quest for the truth about this dreadful event. I do not think that any reasonable person could now claim, faced with all the circumstantial evidence outlined here, that the sinking of SIEV-X was nothing more than the tragic result of a greedy people-smuggler overloading his boat in collusion with equally greedy POLDA accomplices. There are just too many smoking guns in this story now. And those suspicions are further strengthened when combined with Sarah's account of what went wrong in the ADF interception phase.

There is no evidence at this point that any AFP officers helped plan the SIEV-X sting. But the huge silences in AFP testimony, and their manifest reluctance to reveal the truth on the PSDP, do not encourage confidence that AFP will share readily what they may know about what happened to SIEV-X; especially if there a possibility of any arms-length criminality being established.

On the other hand, it might be better for AFP to come clean voluntarily with all it knows, before more damaging revelations may be forced on it by Indonesian or Australian whistleblowers. I do not think that this amazing story will rest here - there will be more to come. I certainly will not rest in my efforts until the Australian people have the full truth on this terrible event.

Finally I want to record the key statements made last week by Senator Faulkner and the defending Government Ministers.

Faulkner, 26 September:

I want to know, and I intend to keep asking until I find out, about a number of things. How far does disruption go? What are the limits, if any? I want to ask precisely what disruption activities are undertaken at the behest of, with the knowledge of, or broadly authorised by, the Australian Government?

I want to know, and I think the Parliament and the Australian public are entitled to know, what directions or authorisations Ministers have issued in relation to disruption? Who tasks the Indonesian officials or others to disrupt people-smugglers or the clients of people-smugglers? ...

We also want to know whether Australians are involved in people-smuggling disruption activities in Indonesia?

We want to know whether Kevin Enniss was actually involved in the sabotage of vessels, as Kevin Enniss has claimed.

We want to know if others were involved in the sabotage of vessels, and we want to know why the Government is avoiding an independent enquiry into these very important issues.

***

Foreign Minister Downer, 25 September, in answer to questions by Catherine McGrath on The World Today:

Downer: There has never been any Government policy to sabotage boats and endanger lives, that has never been the policy of this Government, and of course we would never -

McGrath: That's not the question, though - did it happen? It may not have been Government policy, but did, were people asked to do it, the Indonesian police?

Downer: The Australian Government certainly did not sabotage any boats. Did anyone every sabotage a boat, I've no idea, but did the Australian Government ever sabotage a boat, or was a boat sabotaged and sunk on the instructions of the Australian Government, if I may say so, anybody would know that no Australian Government would do that. An Australian Government wouldn't do that, and what is more, to suggest so, I'm not blaming you, but for Senator Faulkner to suggest so, I think is disgraceful.

***

Justice Minister Chris Ellison, Senate Question Time, 26 September:

Over the last 12 months or more, we have not had a boat land on the mainland of Australia. That has been because of our strategies, which have largely involved cooperation with the Indonesian Police. I have to tell you right now that I do not have any trouble with that. It has advanced the interests of this country. The Indonesian Police have cooperated with this country, and as Minister I've ensured that.

I do not know what else Senator Ray thinks I should do, but everything we have done is in the interests of this country and it has succeeded.

Defence Minister Senator Robert Hill, in answer to questions from Laurie Oakes on Sunday, 29 September:

Oakes: What no one in Government tried to deny this week was the possibility that someone in Indonesia did sink boats in an overzealous pursuit of Australia's disruption policy. Can you deny that ?

Hill: I've heard no suggestion of that through any formal source at all and it's principally come from your program and from Senator Faulkner.

Oakes: The Federal Police answered that question for you, did they? Did they investigate that?

Hill: I hear you say there are further unanswered questions. There'll obviously be the occasion for them to have those questions asked again. But I'm confident that no Australian instrumentality would take action that would put lives at risk.

Oakes: But if that happened, if someone in Indonesia did this because they thought it was what we wanted, would you want to know or is it more comfortable for the Government not to know?

Hill: Well, if I'm confident that no law authority, no Australian institutional body, would act in that way, it's inappropriate to therefore speculate and hypothetically ask me the next question.